The announcement of the retirement of Ingress NGINX at KubeCon NA 2025 sent ripples throughout the Cloud Native ecosystem. Originally developed as an example of how to implement the Ingress API, Ingress NGINX quickly became a popular choice due to its flexibility, features, and being platform agnostic. The retirement of Ingress NGINX leaves many users at a crossroads of what migration path to take. Let's take a look at different migration paths!

Isovalent

Ingress NGINX is being retired, leaving users with two migration paths: moving to another Ingress controller or adopting Gateway API. This guide demonstrates both approaches using Cilium as a replacement, walking through setting up a KIND cluster, installing Cilium with Ingress support for a quick migration, and then exploring the Gateway API approach with GatewayClasses, Gateways, HTTPRoutes, and GRPCRoutes. Using Argo CD as an example workload, the tutorial covers configuration details, Helm values, TLS setup, and the trade-offs between the familiar Ingress-based approach versus the more future-proof Gateway API model.

Migrating Ingress NGINX to Cilium

Choosing Your Path: Cilium Ingress or Cilium Gateway API